Working with Products

22 Working with Products

Products represent a customer- or market-oriented view of a service provider's offerings. Products represent bundles of services and other products that are sold to customers.

Note:

Product entities are included in UIM for backward compatibility with previous versions. The UIM navigation section does not include a Product link unless the user is authorized to access the Product Search page. Access is turned off by default. See UIM System Administrator's Guide for information about authorizing user access.

In UIM, you can use Product entities to represent products. You can define the composition of Product entities to include services, products, or a combination of the two. Product specifications can require that particular product or service entities be included. You can validate a product to ensure that all required products and services have been included. See "Validating Product Compositions" for more information.

You can associate Party entities to products and qualify those associations with roles. Products can also be included in inventory groups. See "Working with Inventory Groups" for more information.

See the following topics for more information about working with products:

Defining Product Compositions

A product can include both services and other products, arranged hierarchically. Products (including the original product) can be both parents and children in the hierarchy; services can be only children.

The products and services you can include in the composition are determined by the Product specification. If the Product specification defines relationships with Product and Service specifications, then only entities based on those specifications can be included. If the specification does not contain these relationships, then any Product or Service entities can be included.

See the following topics for more information about defining a product's composition:

Adding Products or Services to Product Compositions

A product composition includes Product and Service entities that you create specifically for that product. You cannot add existing Product and Service entities to a product composition.

If the product's specification defines required products or services, you must add entities of the required Product or Service specifications to complete the composition. You can validate the product to determine if its composition is complete. See "Validating Product Compositions" for more information.

After you create a product or service as part of a product composition, you can modify it using the normal procedures for those entity types. For example, you can add a configuration to a service.

To add a new product or service to a product composition:

Open the Summary page for a Product entity.
In the Composition section, expand the hierarchy and right-click the position where you want to add the product or service.

A product in the hierarchy can be a parent or a child, but a service can only be a child. If the product composition currently contains no products or services, a single item is displayed to represent the product.
Select Add Product or Add Service.

The entity Information page appears.
Enter the required information and any relevant optional information.

Specification and Name are required for both products and services.
Click Save and Close.

The product or service appears in the Composition section.

Related Topics

Updating Product Compositions

Removing Products and Services

Validating Product Compositions

Updating Product Compositions

After a product's composition has been defined, you can update product and service names and descriptions.

To update a product or service:

Open the Summary page for a Product entity.
In the Composition section, expand the hierarchy to display the product or service you want to update.
Right-click the product or service and select Maintain.

An Information dialog box for the product or service page appears. You can update only the Name and Description fields.
Update the product or service information and click Save and Close.

The dialog box closes and the product or service information is updated.

Removing Products and Services

Validating Product Compositions

Removing Products and Services

To remove a product or service from a composition:

Open the Summary page for a Product entity.
In the Composition section, expand the hierarchy to reveal the product or service you want to remove.
Right-click the product or service and select Remove.

The product or service is removed from the composition.

Updating Product Compositions

Validating Product Compositions

You can validate that a product composition has all the products and services required by its specification.

To validate a product composition:

Open the Summary page for a Product entity.
From the Actions menu, select Validate.

The validation results are displayed at the top of the page. If the validation succeeds, a message reports the success. If validation fails, an error message details what is missing from the product composition.

Updating Product Compositions

Removing Products and Services

Products - New Page

You use the Products - New page to create new products.

Note:

The fields that appear on this page are determined by the specification used to create the entity. The specification is created in Design Studio. The fields in the following table are common to most specifications of this type.

Field	Description
Specification	Select a specification to use to define the new product.
ID	This field displays AUTOGENERATE and is read only. By default, most entity specifications are defined in Design Studio so that IDs are generated automatically.
Name	Enter the name of the new product.
Description	(Optional) Enter a description of the new product.

Related Topics

Creating Entities

Searching for Entities

Products - Information Page

You use the Products - Information page to edit the information that appears in the Summary page Information section. Some data elements, such as the ID, cannot be changed after the entity is created.

Note:

Field	Description
Specification	Displays the specification used to define the product. This field is read only.
ID	Displays the ID generated or entered when the entity was created. This field is read only.
Name	Edit the name of the product.
Description	Edit the description of the product.

Related Topics

Creating Entities

Searching for Entities

Product Summary Page

You use the Product Summary page to define the content for a product.

Note:

The sections listed in the following table are specific to the Product Summary page. See "Entity Summary Page" for information about Summary page fields that are common among all entities.

Section	Description
Information	Displays basic information about the entity, much of which was defined when you created the entity. Click Edit to change this information. See "Products - New Page" and "Creating Entities" for more information.
Inventory Group	Displays any inventory groups to which the product is associated. You use inventory groups to organize entities for a particular purpose. The fields that appear in the Inventory Group section are common among multiple entities. See "Entity Summary Page" for more information. See "Adding an Entity to an Inventory Group from the Entity Summary Page" for information about associating products with an inventory group.
Composition	Displays the services and other products, arranged hierarchically, associated with the products. The products and services you can include in the composition are determined by the Product specification. If the Product specification defines relationships with Product and Service specifications, then only entities based on those specifications can be included. If the specification does not contain these relationships, then any Product or Service entities can be included. The fields that appear in the Composition section are common among multiple entities. See "Entity Summary Page" for more information. See "Defining Product Compositions" for information about adding new products or services to the composition.
Parties	Displays any parties that are associated with the product. You can associate parties to products to identify related individuals or organizations. If the parties have roles assigned to them, you can specify the role that is relevant to the association. The fields that appear in the Parties section are common among multiple entities. See "Entity Summary Page" for more information. See "Associating Parties to Entities" and "Deleting Party Associations from Entities" for information about managing party associations.